Interest JTAC Real-World Fact

[bradleyjs]

This is an excerpt I found on airforcemag.com

 

Close Air Support, Refined and Evolved

Compared with the ad hoc coordination of close air support that characterized the early phases of Operation Enduring Freedom, CAS as practiced in Afghanistan today is a refined process taking full advantage of years of hard experience and specialized technology developed with the mission in mind.

Brig. Gen. Thomas H. Deale, commander of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing here, said, "I’ve been an A-10 pilot my whole career," and "we have got our ability to integrate aerial operations and direct support to the ground force at the highest degree I’ve ever seen."

He explained that USAF has "matured the theater air-to-ground system," to include joint terminal attack controllers—airmen embedded with ground troops who call in air strikes—as well as the air operations center and "the aircraft themselves."

The hallmarks of this coordination lie with the transition of the A-10 to a digital platform, able to take full advantage of data sharing systems, and having the ROVER (Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver) system in the hands of JTACs.

"If you ask what is working better than it should," then the coordination of CAS falls in that category, Deale said. "Granted, we have had two wars and 10 years of development of that, but ... our ability to integrate direct fire and support of our ground forces is extremely good."

Using Litening targeting pods to survey the scene, A-10s can share imagery digitally with JTACs using the ROVER set.

The JTACs can then see everything the pilots see, said Lt. Col. Paul Zurkowski, a deployed A-10 squadron commander. The JTACs can even manipulate the A-10’s Litening pod, slewing it to look at the areas they want to see. Both the pilot and the JTAC can simultaneously see enemy positions or places the JTAC wants the fighter to attack.

"They can vector our pods to where that specific individual or vehicle or house is. So the ROVER is a great capability," Zurkowski noted. Up to five hours of four-channel imagery can be recorded and mined for useful "stills" that can be sent back to the ground troops, he said.

Also, "we can change the ‘lens’ that we look through on the pods," to go from superwide and big to small, to put a scene in context. At the tightest resolution, "now you can count the number of doors on the house," he said. "If you zoom in, you can find people who are located up to four miles away."